What the left hand giveth, the right hand taketh away.

Oh, man ... where can I get a gig like this?

Bernard Prigent, Pfizer’s inside man
PM Harper's appointment of drug company's VP to Canadian Institutes of Health Research is also a registered lobbyist ... to CIHR.

Last October, the Harper government appointed Bernard Prigent to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research. That appointment was met with near-universal condemnation from medical ethicists, because Prigent is a vice-president of Pfizer Canada, a firm that stands to profit from the decisions made at CIHR.

And here's the latest punchline (emphasis tail-waggingly added):

... not only is Prigent a vice president of Pfizer, but he is also a registered lobbyist for Pfizer. That information is only now coming to light, and has never been previously reported. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, the government agency that regulates lobbyists, Prigent's position as Pfizer lobbyist is to sway policy at the "Canadian Institute of Health Researchers (CIHR) and other Research Oriented Spending Programs as it relates to private/public research and development partnerships," and Prigent is to achieve these aims through both oral and written techniques.

In other words, Prigent the Pfizer lobbyist is paid to lobby Prigent the CIHR official.

On the bright side, being both the briber and the bribee has its advantages -- paper bags of money are so much easier to hand over, don't you think?

(Wag of the tail to e-mailer "CA".)